On July 5th, the Supreme People's Court Information Center issued a Special Report on Judicial Big Data of Infringement on Intellectual Property Rights (hereinafter referred to as the Report). The Report made analysis on the concluded IP infringement cases of first instance from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016 from 4 aspects of case conclusion, geographical distribution, characteristics of the parties and case features.

The Report shows that in terms of case features, from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016, the average trial period of IP infringement cases in China is 105 days. Among them, the trial periods of 9 types of cases including patent passing off, infringement of invention patent rights and infringement of computer software copyright exceed the average trial period. In addition, plaintiff's claims were fully supported for only 7.93% of all the IP infringement cases; IP infringement cases were mainly ended with withdrawal, accounting for 50.88%.

In aspect of case conclusion, the number of IP infringement cases in 2015 and 2016 showed an upward trend, among which, the number of IP infringement cases nationwide in 2016 increased by 41.34% compared with 2015. Among the IP infringement cases, the number of copyright infringement cases, trademark infringement cases and patent infringement cases accounted for 50.20%, 34.17% and 15.63% respectively.

With respect to geographical distribution, from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016, Guangdong Province, Beijing and Zhejiang Province concluded the largest number of cases. The foreign-related IP infringement cases involved 28 countries, among which the United States, France and Germany had the largest number of cases involved.

In regards of characteristics of the parties in the lawsuits, from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016, the plaintiffs and defendants were mainly legal persons in IP infringement cases. Among them, legal person accounted for 87.32% of all the plaintiffs, and 74.76% of all the defendants.